Between Land and Sky

Together these works use the eternal symbolism of land, sky, and time as metaphor in media as diverse as painting, photography, sculpture, and printmaking. Camille Corot’s 19th century landscape painting features a youth fishing on a summer pond with surrounding flora and fauna reflected in the pool. This Untitled Old Painting (c.1870)* is a study made with pen and India ink. Although Corot’s sepia-tone work is not an actual photograph, it appears to be informed by the monochromatic realism that characterizes early photographic works. While Corot’s painting rejects colour, Roberta Bondar’s 21st century landscape is a photograph immersed in colour as a means to sensualize the natural world. Having studied at the Brooks Institute of Photography, Bondar portrays a scopic view of the earth beneath the sky through the futuristic eyes of an astronaut. Centuries apart, both artists depict the lens-like quality of water as a mirror that shows a doubling through the reflection of light on a pool’s surface.

Curator: Carla Garnet, Art Gallery of Peterborough.

Sept 15 - Oct 30, 2011
Between Land and Sky: New Acquisitions

Roberta Lynn Bondar – Granite Island in the middle of Beausoleil Island’s Fairy Lake, Georgian Bay Islands National Park, Colour photograph 2000. Donated to the AGP by the artist in 2009.

Between Land & Sky: New Acquisitions to the Permanent Collection showcases recent additions to the AGP’s permanent collection that look to the land and sky for inspiration. It includes works such as Michael Belmore’s Gather (2005), which echoes the natural formation of river basins over the earth’s surface; Gordon Rayner’s Magenta Nights (1969), which captures the reflection off the thousands of lakes in the night sky; Canadian astronaut Roberta Bondar’s Granite Island in the middle of Beausoleil Island's Fairy Lake, Georgian Bay Islands National Park, Ontario (2006); and Nobuo Kubota’s The Atonement Series: Chance, Rock Talk, Talk Rock, Fermentacio (1986), in which the artist animates the rock by a performance-driven conversation.